Stress Relief for IT Staff

I don’t think that anyone working outside of IT can ever understand the amount of stress your average technology employee deals with. Some roles – such as working in support or network operations can at times make you feel like you’re being paid just to be abused. To a certain extent, that’s exactly why there is a premium – people don’t get angry at machines, they get angry and take it out on other people.

This is particularly bad in small business, where people are too cheap to buy what they need and then get mad at you when it fails to meet the speed or reliability they wanted but wouldn’t pay for. It’s your job to make it work and bring it back up or they’ll just take their business elsewhere – because not only are you incompetent and overpriced, you’re also easily replaceable.

The stress in IT is the same as the stress with virtually any other job. It’s just compounded by the realistic expectation that while you do the said job you also perform daily fire drills, do jobs of 3 other people, sacrifice sleep and personal fitness, backup and document your entire role and stay on top of the industry that changes everything about it daily. GO!

Dealing With Stress at ExchangeDefender

First I’m going to explain some of the stressful situations at Own Web Now but if you’re looking for funny stuff, scroll down.

2008-2010: These were rough years both personally and professionally for me both because I was dealing with crap on 3 different fronts. Newborn meant no sleep. When I could potentially sleep I was on the road apologizing for one issue after another as we struggled to get ExchangeDefender to where our partners needed it to be. Ultimately, this was the end of the “SBSer” era, and the amount of pressure and demand to switch from an enterprise-ish business to a consumer-ish business was putting all kinds of strain on the business in terms of juggling objectives.

What was particularly disheartening was that we were profitable and were growing the business far faster than we could support it – which meant we hired everyone we could and ended up with some pretty toxic people. Nothing like going to work with people you don’t like dealing with stuff you don’t want to and constantly being put under pressure to deal with it all.

Dealing with it: Even though the business was growing incredibly and generating obscene amounts of profit, I had to keep my team together. Every single day we would go out to lunch – no questions asked – all on the house. Drinks, booze, whatever it takes not to kill each other. Now academics and doctors will tell you that this is the worst possible way to deal with stress but it helped on several fronts:

#1 When you’re pressed for time, you have to work with the team you’ve got not the team you want. Nothing kills productivity like training new employees.

#2 When you get people together, no matter how much they hate each other and what is going on, there is a bonding process that eventually takes care of itself.

#3 When things aren’t fun, everything pisses you off. The walls, the paint, the smell, the temperature. Getting out of the office and being able to reset and go back in for another 3-4 hours got us through it.

2010 and beyond: After what is affectionately known as the “dark ages” around here things got much better. We got a much bigger office, more light, less walls and have some really great people working on things. But every day isn’t exactly paradise – we still have a punching bag in the office along with enough places you can crash if you want to. We are smack in the heart of downtown Orlando where everything is nearby – and there are few things that bars and ice cream can’t fix. For everything else there is Five Guys.

Vlad Stress

I honestly believe that I’d be a much happier person if I were drunk all the time. Every time I have a rough day and have a drink at lunch or after work I beat myself up for not doing it in the morning. Mouthwash <check>. Shot of whiskey <check>. I could be the Jack Sparrow of email. Unfortunately, I don’t have the discipline to be an alcoholic.

Writing it down – I’ve written extensively about my LV notebook, I carry it around with me everywhere. I doodle UI designs, write down project descriptions, reminders, tasks. Every week gets fresh two pages of important tasks and every day has it’s own important things to do. So when I come to work, I know there is a truckload of stuff I have to get done or there are going to be issues. Whatever is pissing me off and causing me stress is secondary to what I have to deal with in order to move the company forward. My first job as the CEO is to make sure the company moves forward, everything else comes after that. Writing it down allows me to deal with it later, if I have to deal with it at all.

Walk away from a fight – Stressful situations tend to suck you in and I’ve learned that whatever my first instinct response happens to be tends to be correct roughly half the time. Which means that dealing with a stressful situation while I’m stressed out is making it worse half the time. Which then leads others to think that it’s something else that’s wrecking my mood and not the billionth time they’ve failed me in the exact same way. Stuff happens, I’ll fix it, just give me a second.

Drink, eat, go to the bathroom – Did you ever get pissed off at something completely random and couldn’t even explain why it was an issue? Me too. Maybe I’m just tired because the kid woke me up last night? In reality, it’s that I haven’t had anything to eat, I woke up early and have been pounding Diet Coke all morning long. Whenever I’m upset at something that doesn’t make sense I try to run through my biological checklist: “Why are you being a bitch? Thirsty? Hungry?”

Making it portable – Through the years I’ve done a lot to make my life less stressful. I have delegated a lot of my stress inducing responsibilities – from home to work. Now I know you’re probably thinking “Yes, it must be nice to be King Vlad, I can’t delegate my job or I’d be out of one!” but you’d be surprised how helpful people are when you tell them you’re having a problem.. “Listen, I suck at this, can we trade some stuff?” – Folks are understanding, it may not work at McDonalds but it works in smallbiz and in IT. This doesn’t mean I get to wake up whenever I feel like it, go to the beach and phone it in – but it does mean that of the 24 hours I have in a day not everything is ultra urgent and meant to be done as soon as possible. This step is probably the most difficult one because it takes a lot of discipline, lot of planning and organization – because all the goodwill is out the door the first time you drop the ball.

Fun Stuff

DISCLAIMER: WE DON’T DO ANY OF THESE AT WORK TO OUR PARTNERS. THOUGH THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I WISH WE DID.

#1 As soon as you pick up the phone with an angry customer on the other side tell them there is maintenance being done on the SIP server.

#2 Play salsa or merengue music in the background and turn up the volume when they are speaking. Apologize that you can’t help them and ask them to turn it down.

#3 Pretend you’re an Indian and keep on arguing with the client about their name and physical location.

#4 If the call queue goes up, start transfering them to the conference bridge. Then hop into the conference and try to get them to help one another.

#5 When working with tickets, ask for more information. Then change the users password. When they call you, tell them you can’t help them if they can’t verify their password.

#6 If the client is particularly angry tell them you’re getting a manager and put them on the hold. Take a short bathroom break. Answer the phone again, pretending to be the person you like THE LEAST at work. Here you can just be rude and tell them to take it up with the CEO… or just promise them stuff that are ridiculous but likely. Then when they are even angrier, the next person up in the food chain has to deal with it.

#7 If there is a known issue at the moment AND YOU KNOW ITS YOUR FAULT, ask them to reboot their computer or server. Claim it’s a company policy and you can’t go to step #2 until you confirm it’s not the PC – but it has to be done while you’re on the phone, doesn’t matter that you already did it (I had this one served to me by AT&T and it made me angry enough to punch the phone through a desk)

#8 If something IS your fault but you don’t want to admit it, make them do some quick troubleshooting crap that will go nowhere. Then fix the issue, ask them to check again. When they confirm it’s fixed, break it again. Tell them you did nothing to fix it or break it. Repeat this process a few times until you’ve got them believing that it’s an issue on their end, not yours.

#9 If they call in with an urgent issue that is really critical and needs to be handled immediately, ask them if it’s OK to put them on hold while you research their issue. Only pretend to put them on hold – and then act like you’re ordering dinner for the entire office or trying to price a vacation.

#10 Bonus for the road folk – Now some of you are reading this and thinking… I’m a road show monkey, what can I do? Go to your competitors table and ask for a tshirt. Take a whole stack of their business cards. Put their shirt on and go around the trade show trying to sell the product to complete random strangers. When they refuse (obviously) dismiss them in as vulgar of a way as you can get away with, without getting punched, and just hand them the business card you stole and tell them to call you when they get serious about their business.

In closing..

Remember that you get to call yourself a professional because you’re getting paid to do a job. Your personal problems with that job, it’s employees, customers, stakeholders and so on are just that.. your personal problems. Man up and find a way to deal with it, even if the only way you can cope with it is daydreaming about how to mess with people that cause your problems.

Or start drinking. Heavily.